An interesting side story during Jen’s journey in 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess is the process of international adoption she and her husband are going through. It pops up in random times and places during the book and adds a layer of richness as you get glimpses of their family life.

They’re adopting two children from Ethiopia and during the month Jen’s only eating seven foods, she breaks the fast one day by going to an Ethiopian restaurant with her friends. Her friends have taken up the food challenge, but in a modified form. They’re spending a month eating like the poor from different countries (which involves a lot of rice and beans).

Later that evening, Jen makes dinner for her kids. After serving up dinner, the kids are eating while she takes care of other household chores. She returns a few minutes later to find them, mysteriously, quickly finished with dinner. She asks if they ate it all and they end up guiltily confessing to throwing some of their dinner out because they didn’t have any ketchup.

Jen writes,

The chances my African children are going to bed hungry are so high I almost don’t need to waste a line space speculating.And tonight my kids here with me in the land of plenty threw away a pound of food because they didn’t have ketchup.How can we extract our children from this filthy engine where indulgence and ignorance and ungratefulness and waste are standard protocol? Where they know they can throw perfectly good food away because there is always more in the pantry?I wept for all my children tonight, my Ethiopian children orphaned by disease or hunger or poverty who will go to bed with no mother tonight and my biological children who will battle American complacency and overindulgence for the rest of their lives.I don’t know who I feel worse for.– Day 5

Our kids, growing up in the land of plenty, are expected to have a lifespan shorter than that of their parents because of how they’ve been gorged on our bounty.

Our kids, growing up in the land of plenty, don’t realize how blessed they are because they’re surrounded by it.

Our kids, growing up in the land of plenty, need parents and role models who take up the call to fast, to stand with the poor and oppressed. Who show them a way different from the way of the American Dream which is literally gorging them to death.

How do you model to those around you (children, fellow church goers) ways to break free from the trap of taking abundance for granted?

The first month of Jen Hatmaker’s Mutiny Against Excess is about reducing her intake of food. She cuts everything out of diet but seven food items: chicken, Eggs, whole-wheat bread, sweet potatoes, spinach, avocados, apples. Only water to drink and salt and pepper as seasoning. Right from the start she lets you know – she loves food and seasonings and sauces. This is a hard month for her.

On the first day of the mutiny, she’s looking longingly at a homemade cupcake sitting on her kitchen counter. (It’s there since her kids aren’t participating in this phase of 7). She writes,

It was strange not to pinch a bite off. I stared it down, trying to own it with my mind. I opened my pantry and uttered, ‘You’re dead to me.’ It was all bizarre.Which reminds me: I’m doing this for a reason. This is a fast, a major reduction of the endless possibilities that accompany my every meal. It is supposed to be uncomfortable and inconvenient. Not because I’m a narcissist but because the discomfort creates space for the Holy Spirit to move. This shake-up of my routine commands my attention. I can no longer default to normal, usual, mindless, thoughtless.

Normal. Usual. Mindless. Thoughtless.

I wish those weren’t words that describe exactly how I auto-pilot through the majority of my days.

Why do I stay up way too late watching TV?Because I always do – it’s my routine.

Why do I waste my lunch hour on Facebook and YouTube?Because I always do… what else would I do?

Why don’t I ever brainstorm ways to uniquely encourage my coworker or use my evening to engage with my neighbor?Because I’ve never done that… it would be different… weird.

For some reason, we’re afraid of the sort of emptiness that a break from the routine offers. We’re so used to living with our brains engaged in the “next normal thing” – we’re lost when the chance comes to imagine what kind of life we’d like to be living.

What Jen realizes during her month of eating only those seven foods is that while her palate most definitely gets bored, she feels so much better than when she was eating junk food. She says

After eating only whole foods and virtually no fast food, my pants are falling off. I feel energetic during my typical afternoon slump. My cheeks are rosy. My allergies disappeared. I haven’t had a single digestive issue. My canker sores went dormant. I swear, my eyes are whiter.

In short, her break from all but seven foods gives her the space to imagine life differently. To actually seethe difference in her body, energy level, and physical condition. And she likes what she sees.

I’ve noticed the same phenomenon as I’ve started trying to step aside from the “normal, usual, mindless, thoughtless” that tends to rule my days. Whether it’s in changing how I eat or calling a media fast on Sundays – it gives me a glimpse into what other types of lifestyle is possible.

I often like what I see.

Like Jen, a break from the normal, brainless, usual routine makes me question what I was putting in that routine in the first place.

Do you make space in your life for breaks from the routine? How do you allow yourself to imagine life differently or to implement changes?

Lately, I’ve been noticing a hard-heartedness in myself when it comes to messages encouraging sacrifice or simple living. When the preacher I’ve downloaded off iTunes even thinks about going there – I mentally slap his comments away. My knee-jerk response has been, “I moved to a third world country, Mr-Mega-Church-Pastor. Do NOT lecture me on sacrificial obedience.”

More on my obvious issues in a minute…

I confessed these thoughts to a friend, who wrote back about the “one more” principle. That having left quite a few homey comforts, it’s hard to think about shedding one more. He is spot on.

I have somehow decided what I have given up is enough. That I have reached the limits of what God expects me to shed, give up, cast off. I’d fallen for the myth of all attempts at religion via legalism. The myth that I can do enough to earn the right not to have to do any more. It’s why I can be called on the “one more” principle. It’s the myth embedded in the calls to sacrificial obedience that pastors make from pulpits – and I’ve heard way too many of these – that include a sentiment like, “It’s not like you’re being called to go to a foreign country or something”.

Except what if you are? What if you have gone to a foreign country? Does that mean you have a corner on sanctification-through-sacrifice-of-comfort? That nothing further will be required? That’s the message I was hearing…

Which is probably why I notice that along with my mental plugging of ears there is also anger, and a tiny sense of betrayal. Because for years, I bought into the myth of a limit. And I’ve now done what was held up as the pinnacle of complete surrender. But not only have I found that these sacrifices did not result in a more instant, less winding journey to sanctification – I have discovered that on the other side of the world, there are just as many time-wasters, distraction-providers, and comforts calling to replace the ones I gave up. Was I really expecting the adventure into another country to be the direct (or at least easier) path to sainthood?

But if what we’re about is indeed knowing God instead of following a system of satisfying “the man” through rules and reaching finish lines of “enough” – then our attempts at knowing an unlimited God cannot contain limits. We will never be done in the trading off of little parts of ourselves to gain a clearer understanding of Him. This has nothing to do with how much we think we should sacrifice but with how much of Him there is to know.

This is why Hatmaker’s book disarmed me. At the very beginning – in the Introduction – she admits to this being a part of her very un-perfect journey. She quickly reviews how God had already upended her & her family’s life by calling them out of lucrative big-church pastoring into work with a church plant with a tiny budget focused on the poor, down-and-out, and homeless. They’d given up all that and then she discovers there’s “one more” thing that God’s calling her to focus in on.

She’s not going to write about how she found the right, “Christian” limits for spending, eating and media intake.

She’s not going to show how you too can be biblical in your habits by meeting these man-made benchmarks of commitment.

She’s going to tell you about her own personal journey into letting go of a few “one more things” in order to meet God in a new and different way. In her words –she was on a quest to “create space for God’s kingdom to break through”. Her prayer at the beginning is, “Jesus, may there be less of me and my junk and more of You and Your kingdom”.

How could I disagree with that?

Reading her journey reminded me it is not – and should never have been – about some sort of standard life with finish lines of extreme sacrifices made to reach a defined goal of dedication. It’s about making less space for me and more space to know Jesus.